Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Law of Peoples' and 'What's Wrong with Rape?'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


5 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
     Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
     From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / c. A unified people
Rawls rejected cosmopolitanism because it doesn't respect the autonomy of 'peoples' [Rawls, by Shorten]
     Full Idea: Rawls rejected the cosmopolitan extension of his theory because he thought it failed to respect the political autonomy of 'peoples', which was his term of art for societies or political communities.
     From: report of John Rawls (The Law of Peoples [1999], p.115-8) by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory 09
     A reaction: Interesting that you might well start with the concept of 'a people', prior to some sort of social contract, but end up with rather alarming conflicts or indifference between rival peoples. Why should my people help in the famine next door?
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 5. Sexual Morality
A rape disregards the status of being a person - but so does all assault [Foa]
     Full Idea: In a rape a person is used without proper regard for her personhood - but this is true of every kind of assault.
     From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1)
     A reaction: This is a good step towards her attempt to pin down what is specifically wrong with rape, which strikes me as an extremely important question, and not merely in order to justify punishments.
Rape of children is dreadful, but no one thinks children should have a right of consent [Foa]
     Full Idea: Rape of children is at least as heinous as rape of adults, though few believe that children have or ought to have the same large domain of consent adults (male and female) ought to have.
     From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1)
     A reaction: A powerful point. She is not quite spelling out the crux, which is that no one thinks children should have a right to consent to sexual intercourse, which means that consent is irrelevant in such a case of rape. So it can't be the key to adult rape?
If men should lust and women shouldn't, that makes rape the prevalent sexual model [Foa]
     Full Idea: We are taught that sexual desires are desires women ought not to have and men must have. This is the model which makes necessary an eternal battle of the sexes. It explains why rape is the prevalent model of sexuality.
     From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 3)
     A reaction: A striking thought. See 'The Origins of Sex' by F.Dabhoiwala, which claims that women used to be seen as the sexual predators, and the balance shifted in the 18thC. Are women obliged to exhibit lust, in order to defuse rapacious desires?